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A creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Speaking to the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the same inn, visiting the very same church and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were banned. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career developing it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a local resident succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Installations

A pair of guard towers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays showing the most significant moments in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents needed special permission to look after their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but not the two, in case they attempted to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but more than double the number individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and large car park – is probable to